Tag Archives: Lie

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Months after the Veterans Administration scandal exploded in the headlines, top officials are still lying and hiding information from Congress, and President Obama is actively trying to roll back the freedom of veterans to seek health care outside of the government system.

That’s the conclusion of Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Last May, the VA was rocked by reports that veterans were forced to wait months for routine medical appointments and that some officials were doctoring hospital and medical records to cover up the failure to provide care. In response, Veterans Affairs Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki resigned and Congress approved legislation giving future secretaries more freedom to remove ineffective personnel. Former Procter & Gamble Chairman Robert McDonald was eventually confirmed to succeed Shinseki and lead major reform efforts.

Are there signs of improvement?

On Monday evening, the House Veterans Affairs Committee grilled VA General Counsel Leigh Bradley over why more than 100 separate requests for information from the committee have gone unanswered for months and why the information that is given is often found to be false.

“The news only gets worse and worse,” Huelskamp said.

According to Associated Press reports on the hearing, committee chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., expressed deep frustration with the VA’s lack of cooperation on key facts, including wait times for veterans at the Phoenix hospital where the scandal began.

“Let there be no mistake or misunderstanding: When this committee requests documents, I expect production to be timely, complete and accurate,” Miller said.

Huelskamp is particularly incensed at the falsehoods coming out of the VA, including one stated by Secretary McDonald on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“They have falsified information, and it is not just lying to members of Congress; it’s lying to the American people,” he said. “We even had the secretary about a month ago lie on national television and claim that he had fired 60 employees that made up, falsified, cooked the books on wait times for our vulnerable veterans.”

The real number was nowhere near that high.

“He only fired four,” Huelskamp said. “There’s a big difference between four and 60, so there’s a lack of trust there. But this is, more importantly, a lack of trust between veterans who deserve their care and whether they’re getting in on time and whether they’re getting the proper care.”

And the congressman said the lies don’t stop there.

“The VA claimed that at the (Los Angeles) veterans facility, the wait was only four days,” he said. “We found out later, according to a CNN report, that it’s more than 30 days. Who do you believe? Who I believe is the veteran. If the veteran says they’ve been waiting, that’s what happens.”

Huelskamp said when Congress tries to separate fact from fiction, the massive VA bureaucracy grinds investigations to a halt.

“We’ve had, I think, three secretaries of the VA in my four years here,” he said. “For secretary after secretary and undersecretary after undersecretary, I didn’t know that had that many undersecretaries. They always send a new one over, and the answer is always, ‘We’ll get back to you. We’ll get that answer to you.’

“We have documented where they have lied to the committee, where they have falsified information,” he said.

If anything good came out of the VA scandal, Huelskamp believes it is the provision within last year’s reform bill that allows veterans to access care outside of the government system to shorten how long they wait for care. The congressman said expanded choice is working well for veterans and no longer forces many of them to travel hundreds of miles to approved doctors and facilities. He said that change is further proof the less government is involved in our health care, the better that care will be.

“That’s the best government health care you can get, and what we saw in Phoenix and around the country is that it’s been an abysmal failure,” Huelskamp said.

While the expanded health-care choices may be popular with veterans, Huelskamp said the Obama administration is actively trying to eliminate it.

“When the administration came in and asked to end the Veterans Choice Program, that sent shock waves through Congress because most Democrats and Republicans agree we need to improve the system and give veterans more choice in their health care,” he said.

“There’s a pushback from the administration, but the secretary has agreed – maybe not the president but the secretary has agreed – veterans deserve to keep their choice,” he said. “We’re trying to push the VA in a different direction than Obamacare is taking the rest of the health-care system. I think, at the end of the day, the better model is putting Americans in charge of their health care, not Washington, D.C.”

When will Congress get timely answers and the VA operate more efficiently? Huelskamp said a big part of the problem is a massive government bureaucracy that takes a long time to straighten out.

“There’s a culture of non-accountability, a culture of attacks on whistleblowers. That’s been going on for decades. It’s difficult to change that. That takes years,” said Huelskamp, who estimates some 330,000 bureaucrats are involved in VA operations.

“I think many of them do a terrific job, but it’s a system that’s set up based on the 1950s and ’60s, not 2015,” he said. “So it is a cultural shift at the VA, but the president has to provide leadership. I fear in the next two years, he will continue to drift away from any commitments to veterans in terms of reforming the system.”

What about Secretary McDonald? Is he the right man to lead this change?

“We’ll see if the secretary can answer those questions we asked a couple of nights ago,” Huelskamp said. “Some of these questions have been outstanding for months, which will give us insight (into) whether they’re really making the changes that were promised.”

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Yesterday on Meet the Press, Obama told Chuck Todd that he was not specifically referring to ISIL in his infamous JV quote from the New Yorker in January:

TODD: “Long way, long way from when you described them as a JV team. Was that bad intelligence or your misjudgment?”

OBAMA: “Keep in mind I wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL. I’ve said that, regionally, there were a whole series of organizations that were focused primarily locally, weren’t focused on homeland, because I think a lot of us, when we think about terrorism, the model is Osama bin Laden and 9/11.”

But Politifact disagreed and gave the above statement by Obama a big fat LIE after contacting the author of the New Yorker piece in which the quote was originally published:

Critics have maligned Obama’s “JV” remark in recent weeks as the Islamic State continues to wreak havoc throughout Syria and Iraq. The origin of the comment is a New Yorker profile of Obama by editor David Remnick. The New Yorker published Remnick’s profile on Jan. 27, 2014. In it, he wrote, “In the 2012 campaign, Obama spoke not only of killing Osama bin Laden; he also said that Al Qaeda had been ‘decimated.’ I pointed out that the flag of Al Qaeda is now flying in Fallujah, in Iraq, and among various rebel factions in Syria; Al Qaeda has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, too.”

Obama responded: “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant.” (For the nonsports fan, JV stands for junior varsity, and it usually means a high school or college’s secondary team.)

Remnick confirmed to PolitiFact that the interview took place on Jan. 7 and he was referencing a specific event that had happened just days before: the overtaking of the Iraq city of Fallujah on Jan. 3.

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Al Jazeera America reported on Jan. 4: “On Friday, ISIL gunmen sought to win over the population in Fallujah, one of the cities they swept into on Wednesday. A commander appeared among worshippers holding Friday prayers in the main city street, proclaiming that his fighters were there to defend Sunnis from the government, one resident said.

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Officials within the Iraqi government told the “Agence France-Presse that ISIL, the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, remained in control of parts of the two cities on Thursday,” according to NBC.

So when Remnick referenced an al Qaeda group taking over Fallujah, it’s clear whom he was talking about.

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Obama said his JV comment “wasn’t specifically referring to ISIL.” He was not specifically asked about Islamic State, but it’s pretty clear this is the group that was being referenced in the conversation. The transcript backs this up, as do news events from the time of the discussion.

We rate the statement False.

And there it is. A big fat lie.

So first he blames bad intelligence and when that doesn’t work, he claims he was talking about something else.

Along with Barack Obama’s promise of “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan,” was his declaration that “people with pre-existing conditions shouldn’t be penalized.”

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Yeah, well, that was then and this is now. People with serious pre-existing diseases, precisely those Obama said the “Affordable Care Act” would help, could find themselves paying for expensive drug treatments with no help from the healthcare exchanges.

Those with expensive diseases such as lupus or multiple sclerosis face something called a “closed drug formulary.” Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains:

“If the medicine that you need isn’t on that list, it’s not covered at all. You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn’t count against your deductible, and it doesn’t count against your out of pocket limits, so you’re basically on your own.”

But didn’t Obama pledge – multiple times – to help those with pre-existing conditions, a: get covered, and, b: control their cost of healthcare? Here’s the reality, according to Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats MS patients and others with neurological conditions:

“So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication. That’s a possibility under the new ObamaCare going on right now.”

Moreover, Dr. Kantor worries that “this may drive more patients” to not buy their medicines, “which we know is dangerous,” he says. “We know MS can be a bad disease when you’re not treating it. When you’re treating it, for most people they handle it pretty well, but we know when you don’t treat (it), it’s the kind of disease where people end up in wheel chairs potentially.”

And so it continues. What began with the botched rollout of a website, continued with millions of health insurance cancellation notices, and will undoubtedly face a year when the other shoe continues to drop, we are in the midst of doing exactly what Nancy Pelosi infamously said before the bill became law: we are “finding out what’s in it” – and we don’t like it.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for telling Congress the National Security Agency doesn’t gather data on millions of Americans.

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The apology comes after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden gave top-secret information to newspapers that last month published stories about the federal government collecting the data from phone calls and such Internet communications as emails.

Clapper apologized in a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that was posted Tuesday on the website of Clapper’s office.

Clapper said in the June 21 letter that his answer was “clearly erroneous.”

Americans have long known the United States implemented surveillance programs under the Patriot Act, in the wake of 9/11, with the goal of preventing more terror attacks, and that the programs targeted foreign and overseas suspects. However, many Americans seem stunned at the apparent extent of the programs and that the broad data collection included basic details on Americans’ phone records.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked Clapper at a March 12 congressional hearing whether the NSA “collects any type of data at all on millions of hundreds of millions of Americas?”

Wyden asked because Clapper suggested publicly months earlier that stories about the NSA keeping “dossiers” on millions of Americans were “completely false.”

Clapper told Wyden: “No sir, it does not.”

When asked for clarification, he said “not wittingly.”

After the latest stories appeared to reveal otherwise, Clapper said he gave the “least untruthful answer possible.”

Clapper said in the letter to Feinstein that when answering he was confounded by the word dossier and challenged by trying to protect classified information. He also said that when answering Wyden, he was focused on whether the U.S. collected the content of phone and email conversations, and not so-called metadata, which essentially is phone numbers, email addresses, dates and times. He wrote that he “simply didn’t think of” the pertinent section of the Patriot Act under which that information can be collected.

“Thus my response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize,” Clapper said to Feinstein, in the letter.

Snowden’s father Lon, meanwhile, chastised Clapper for his answers in an open letter Snowden sent Tuesday to his son.

“We leave it to the American people to decide whether you or Director Clapper is the superior patriot,” Snowden wrote in the letter to his son.

For months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive. For months, conservative media has been howling over the falsehood that the Accountability Review Board (ARB) offered a thorough investigation into the September 11 terror attack in Benghazi. The most frustrating part is that in order to ignore the legions of unanswered questions surrounding Libya, Obama and his media (most famously Slate’s Dave Weigel, who used the report to say GOP claims of a cover up were “pure fiction”) have hid behind the ARB’s report as though it were definitive.

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On Monday, President Obama tried this ruse again. But now that the media has finally woken up from a five-year infatuation, he isn’t getting away with it. PolitiFact has labeled as “mostly false,” Obama’s claim that…

Over the last several months, there was a review board headed by two distinguished Americans, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering, who investigated every element of [the Benghazi incident.]

Here is PolitiFact’s reasoning:

While the [ARB] did investigate numerous angles of the security issues, it didn’t look at who perpetrated the attack, nor did it probe the administration’s public communications afterward. No less an authority than the board’s co-chairman undercut Obama’s sweeping claim that the board “investigated every element” with repeated comments on three Sunday shows. On balance, we rate Obama’s claim Mostly False.

Oh how times have changed. Back in December Weigel could get away with using the ARB report to falsely claim the Administration had been cleared of a cover up even though the ARB didn’t even look into the possibility of a cover up.

Today, Obama can’t even get away with it.

By the way, this is the second falsehood the President of the United States has been caught telling this week.

During the National Rifle Association’s meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and the White House gun violence task force, the vice president said the Obama administration does not have the time to fully enforce existing gun laws.

Jim Baker, the NRA representative present at the meeting, recalled the vice president’s words during an interview with The Daily Caller: “And to your point, Mr. Baker, regarding the lack of prosecutions on lying on Form 4473s, we simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.”

Submitting false information on an ATF Form 4473 – required for the necessary background check to obtain a firearm – is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison, depending on prior convictions and a judge’s discretion, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Baker, the NRA’s director of federal affairs, told TheDC that he was given five minutes to present the NRA’s concerns and the approach the group saw as being the most effective to prevent another massacre like the Newtown, Conn. shooting. During those five minutes, he said, he mentioned the need to prosecute existing gun laws.

He pointed to the low number of prosecutions for information falsification and the relatively low felony prosecution rate for gun crimes.

Biden was apparently unmoved by Baker’s concern.

In 2010, prosecutors considered just 22 cases of information falsification, according to a 2012 report to the Department of Justice by the Regional Justice Information Service. Forty additional background-check cases ended up before prosecutors for reasons related to unlawful gun possession.

In all, prosecutors pursued just 44 of those 62 cases. More than 72,600 applications were denied on the basis of a background check.

“We think it is problematic when the administration takes lightly the prosecutions under existing gun laws and yet does not seem to have a problem promoting a whole host of other gun laws,” Baker told TheDC.

“If we are not going to enforce the laws that are on the books, it not only engenders disrespect for the law but it makes law-abiding gun owners wonder why we are going through this exercise we are going through now,” he added.

Gun prosecutions in 2011 were down 35 percent from the previous administration’s peak in 2004, according to Justice Department data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said he was shocked by the administration’s lack of interest in pursuing individuals who lied to obtain a firearm.

“They don’t have time to pursue people who are dangerous, who aren’t supposed to get guns, and the message they have sent is literally ‘Good luck, go get them elsewhere,’” Cox said in an interview with TheDC.

Cox reiterated that he believes the real issues the country needs to deal with are mental health and crime, and he stressed the importance of enforcing and prosecuting existing laws.

“You can talk all you want,” Cox said, “but until there is a will to follow through, then it is literally just going to paper over the problem and guarantee that bad people continue to have access to firearms and good people will be blamed for it.”

Vice President Biden’s press office did not respond to requests for comment.

The president says right-to-work laws mean “the right to work for less money.” So how does he explain the fact that incomes are up in RTW states while forced unionism is a proven job killer?

Campaigning Monday in Michigan as it stood poised to become the nation’s 24th right-to-work state, President Obama spoke the exact opposite of the truth to union workers at a Daimler Detroit Diesel plant in the birthplace of organized labor.

“What we shouldn’t be doing,” he told the small crowd, “is trying to take away your rights to bargain for better wages. We don’t want a race to the bottom. We want a race to the top.”

Yet looking at the hard numbers, becoming a right-to-work state is a direct line to the top.

According to Michigan’s Mackinac Center, using data taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-sector, inflation-adjusted employee compensation in right-to-work states increased by 12% between 2001 and 2011 compared with just 3% over the same period in forced-unionization states.

These good wages came from good jobs. Employment in right-to-work states expanded 2.4% over the same stretch vs. a 3.4% decline in non-right-to-work states. Ironically, Obama is taking credit for jobs created in RTW states.

All Politics

According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, right-to-work states (excluding Indiana, which passed a RTW law in early 2012) “were responsible for 72% of all net household job growth across the U.S. from June 2009 through September 2012.”

This is why people vote with their feet and move to these states. RTW states experienced large population gains of 15.3% from 2000 to 2010, compared to 5.9% in non-RTW states.

Obama did get one thing right, though, when he said the bills that passed both houses of the Michigan legislature “don’t have to do with economics. They have everything to do with politics.”

The president who fought Boeing’s expansion in RTW South Carolina knows it’s all about his keeping union dues flowing into Democratic coffers and maintaining the plush lifestyles of the union leaders who support him.

Freeloading

Michigan law will now bar requiring workers to pay money to a third party, namely unions, as a condition of employment. This has given rise to the big lie that workers who refuse to join a union and pay dues will get a “free ride” enjoying the benefits of union representation without contributing to that representation.